What's new on CPAN - January 2015
Welcome to “What’s new on CPAN”, a curated look at last month’s new CPAN uploads for your reading and programming pleasure. This year we’re running a new feature: “module of the month”, where we highlight our favorite new CPAN upload. Enjoy!
Module of the month
FFI::Platypus enables Perl to call foreign language functions (e.g. Python, C, Rust) using libffi. Unlike using XS, no knowledge of C is required. The module not only works great but has comprehensive documentation and is under active development.
Module author Graham Ollis has also blogged about it. FFI::Platypus is hosted on GitHub, check it out!
APIs & Apps
- Easily share files over HTTP with charon
- App::PerlXLock will lock the screen when run. Requires X11
- Need to serve a directory over HTTP? Check out App::SimpleHTTPServer
- App::SpeedTestis cool command line utility for testing connection speeds
- It comes with warnings but Google::Tasks looks like a useful API
Config & DevOps
- MetaCPAN::Helper provides some high-level sugar for searching MetaCPAN
- Shell::Tools imports an arsenal of convenient modules for scripting
- App::RemoteCommand execute commands on remote servers - very nice.
Data
- HTML::Differences provides “reasonably sane” HTML diffs
- Compare database structures using DBIx::Diff::Schema
- Data::Fake is a data generator module with a functional interface
- Read and update complex data structures easily using Data::Focus
- Phash::FFI is an interface for an external library that hashes media files to test for similarity
Development and Interop
- FFI::Me is provides some sugar over FFI::Raw that lets you call foreign language (e.g. C, Python, Ruby) library functions
- Generate a simple-but-sensible module readme with Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Readme::Brief
- Object::Properties is another class library, similar to Object::Tiny with some additional features
- ARGV::Struct parses complex command line arguments
Testing & Debugging
- Carp::Capture stores stack traces for later inspection.
- Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Test::TidyAll will test your distribution code is tidy before letting you publish it
Web
- A couple of new Catalyst modules; Catalyst::Plugin::Session::Store::Cookie does what it says, and Catalyst::Plugin::ResponseFrom which allows the request and capture of responses from external URLs.
- FCGI::Buffer provides a validator and cache for FCGI output
This article was originally posted on PerlTricks.com.
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David Farrell
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